


Sick Day

by boredealis



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Klaus has telekinesis, Not Season Two Compliant, Sickfic, diego is a soft boi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25768267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boredealis/pseuds/boredealis
Summary: Klaus had been sick several times in their presence, with cold and flu and whatever else. He’d sneezed and coughed and whined and requested more cough syrup from Mom than necessary. But he’d always been on the drugs. All at once, they had to consider the possibility that Klaus had no idea how to control the fluctuations in his powers while sober.
Relationships: Diego Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves & Everyone
Comments: 39
Kudos: 699





	Sick Day

**Author's Note:**

> This diverges from canon and, therefore, does not have spoilers for season two. Notice how I sidestepped all of the things in season two that would be inconvenient for me? Very cool and sexy of me.

It started, as most bad things do, on Tuesday. They were having one of their weekly “family meetings.” Luther, in his typical overcompensating fashion, had insisted that they meet to discuss important, Apocalypse-related things at least once a week. Diego disagreed—they hadn’t spent months jumping through time and going through puberty so they could sit down and talk more. But unfortunately, Allison sided with Luther, Vanya with Allison, Five with Vanya, and Klaus with whatever side was providing the most drama and chaos, so, family meetings. As Diego predicted, all of the family meetings devolved into bickering eventually, and this Tuesday was no exception. Diego was in the middle of another extremely justified takedown of Luther’s leadership skills and extremely small head, when it occurred to him that something was just...off. Diego cut himself off mid-sentence.

Luther, of course, took this as an admission of defeat. “What, that’s all you got?” Luther crowed, with that smug little rat face of his.

“Maybe Two finally decided to grow a brain,” Five said diplomatically, applying another layer of sparkly purple eyeshadow to his mannequin. Diego tried not to think about how the color suited her. That was the path to madness.

“Five, we talked about the insults,” Allison said, with the tone of someone who knew she wasn’t being listened to.

“It wasn’t an insult. It was a compliment.”

Diego looked around the living room, trying to spot exactly what was off about the whole thing. Luther, still with the haughty leader vibe even though he basically caused the moon to blow up, was reading the dictionary definition of “compliment” to Five. A losing battle, there. Five had moved on to sharpening an eyeliner pencil. Klaus was curled up in one of those awful armchairs, quietly staring into the fire. Allison and Vanya were sitting on the other couch together, as usual. Vanya’s expression was a bit pinched, but the water in her glass was standing still and calm, so she wasn’t particularly annoyed...No problems there...

Wait. Hold on.

Klaus was sitting quietly in a chair?

Since when?

Diego liked to think he knew a lot about his siblings. Sure, the last few months had proven him wrong about a few things. He knew that Five was dead, and then Five reappeared. He knew that Vanya was ordinary, and then she blew up the moon. He knew that Klaus was the lookout, and then he brought Ben back from the dead. But he’d spent enough time around Klaus, high and sober and in between, to know that quiet just wasn’t his style. 

“Klaus,” Diego called out.

Klaus continued to stare into the fire, eyes dull. 

“Got anything to add?” 

No response.

Maybe Diego should have known better than that. Klaus rarely responded to his name being called. It had been to Hargreeves’ eternal frustration, when the old bastard was still alive, and to Luther’s current frustration on missions. Klaus responded better physical touch. With that in mind, Diego walked up to Klaus and gently tapped on his shoulder. 

Klaus jumped. 

And the fire jumped straight out of the fireplace.

Vanya, startled, shattered all of the light bulbs. The sudden darkness gave them a great view of the fire’s path. It landed on one of the taxidermied animal heads, a throw pillow, and the rug, eating them up gamely. Luther started shouting about water but made no attempt to go get any. The fire alarm that Pogo must have installed, since Hargreeves would obviously see no need for fire safety, started going off. Five jumped away. Allison started talking about how they should calmly and orderly proceed to an exit, since she had been assigned some sort of bullshit fire marshal task by Mom when they were kids and never let any of them forget it. Klaus didn’t react to the fire, either positively or negatively—he stayed curled up in his chair, as if nothing was happening at all. 

Five jumped back with a watering can and doused the fire. “You’re all idiots,” he told them, as though that was new information.

“What happened, Diego?” Luther asked, presumably because Diego was the closest non-Klaus entity to the fire. “Was it Vanya?”

“Vanya is standing right here.” Vanya pulled a piece of lightbulb out of her hair, nose scrunched. “It wasn’t me.”

“It wasn’t Vanya,” Diego echoed. 

Vanya smiled and pointed at him. “See?” 

“Then what?” The tiny little gears in Luther’s head were practically audible.

“I think it was, um.” Diego turned to look at Klaus, aware of how strange it seemed. For the last few months, Klaus had held the dubious honor of “most pathetic powers.” Diego wouldn’t have phrased it quite that way, but Klaus had printed the banner himself, and it wasn’t Diego’s place to define Klaus’s powers for him. Sure, Klaus had managed to pull their asses out of the fire by manifesting Ben, but that was as much Ben as it was Klaus. And as far as Diego was aware, Ben had no ability to control fucking fire. 

“Klaus?” Allison said, sounding as confused as Diego felt. 

Diego didn’t really want to touch Klaus again. Instead, he looked at him, more carefully this time. Klaus’s eyes were bright and shiny. His skin was flushed. Close up, Diego could see that he was trembling finely.

“Oh, shit. I think he’s—“

Klaus, always with the perfect timing, pitched over and hurled on Diego’s shoes.

“—sick.”

* * *

_They didn’t get sick at all when they were little kids. They didn’t really go outside and their conduits to the outside world were an alien, a chimpanzee, and a robot. So, the Umbrella Academy essentially lived in a perfect, sickness-free bubble for the first twelve years of their lives. Then they’d gone on their first mission. Their pathetically underdeveloped immune systems first met with the common cold._

_All hell broke loose._

_Five was the first one to succumb. He stumbled around for a day or so, throat aching and nose running, too proud to actually admit that he had a problem. The next day, they were eating breakfast and listening to a somehow boring lecture about how to efficiently skin a raccoon. Five sneezed, and phased straight through his chair and the floor. It was a testament to their upbringing that nobody was particularly bothered by this. Hargreeves had sat up, calmly dabbed at his mustache with a monogrammed napkin, and marched away to deliver Five an impassioned_ _lecture about self control. As far as cures go, the lecture certainly was not a good one._

_Every time Five sneezed, he jumped._

_Five’s sneezing became very annoying very quickly. Five jumped into their beds. Five jumped into the bathroom. Five jumped into the shower, while Diego was in it. Five jumped into the basement during super secret training slash child abuse._

_Mom and Pogo’s best effort to stop the spontaneous jumping was to drug Five into unconsciousness. They should have seen the writing on the wall then, but didn’t._

_Allison was next._

_The_ _issue with Allison wasn’t the sneezing, or the coughing, or anything like that. It was the fever. Her immune system reacted to the virus with an absolutely insane fever, and she quickly slid into delirium. In her delirium, she rumored. She rumored Luther, who was being pathetically sappy by her bedside, into believing that he was a chipmunk. She rumored Pogo, who was trying to give her disgusting cough syrup, to go jump off a bridge. It was only Mom’s interference and fast talking that led Allison to reverse that_ _one. Allison rumored Vanya into thinking she had superpowers—which Diego considered cruel then, and even more cruel in retrospect. Hargreeves finally ordered her to be sedated and locked up with Five in the infirmary, where they kept all the failures._

_Luther and Diego got sick around the same time. When Luther told the story, Diego got sick first, of course. Hargreeves, tired of the whole ordeal of his toys being out of commission, banished them to the infirmary without even a second glance. Neither of their powers were very destructive when inadvertently activated, so neither of them were heavily sedated. Instead, they “rested.” The infirmary was very boring and there was no good company. They played cards, sniped at each other in whispers, and cringed when Allison talked in her sleep. It was fine._

_(If Diego woke up in the middle of the night unable to breathe, choking on air, desperately trying to recognize a feeling that he’d never felt before...well, that was his secret and his business.)_

_Ben appeared in the infirmary eventually. Diego could only guess the destructive potential of his powers when unknowingly unleashed. Perhaps as a precautionary measure, Ben was nearly comatose. His stomach growled and clicked while he was asleep, but it always did. Luther and Diego exerted all of their efforts to distract Ben from the horror, when he was awake. They talked to him, joked with him, and pretended as though he wasn’t the gateway to death that he was._

_Diego hadn’t appreciated, then, just how much control Ben had to exercise over the demons inside of him. If Diego had observed that, maybe he could have seen Ben’s death coming._

_Neither Klaus nor Vanya ever appeared in the infirmary. Diego, like the rest of them, assumed that Klaus and Vanya just hadn’t gotten sick, and was jealous of them. When they got out of quarantine, Klaus actually had his jaw wired shut, apparently from fucking around in Mom’s heels and tripping down the stairs. His silence seemed almost a mercy after their sickness._

_After that one incident, Hargreeves became better at building up their natural immunities. They got a lot of shots from Mom and Pogo. They washed their hands a lot more, and decontaminated after missions. Klaus started working at building something else entirely—his drug habit. They’d all figured out that they were susceptible to human weaknesses and human drugs, and Klaus took full advantage of that._

_Klaus and Vanya got sick since the first time, of course. Once they started interacting with the outside world, it became a part of their lives just like it was a part of everyone else’s. All of the Umbrella Academy members learned to control their powers during sickness. Eventually, they were just normal kids and teenagers and adults when sick—kind of whiny, always cold, and perpetually sucking down honey flavored cough drops._

_It never occurred to Diego, to any of them, really, that they’d never seen Vanya or Klaus sick while they were sober._

_Diego didn’t wonder if maybe there was a reason for that._

* * *

Tuesday. Family meeting. Klaus puked. After that, a lot of things happened in quick succession.

Luther, always a sympathetic puker, gagged. Five swore creatively and jumped out of the room, probably not eager to recreate the last time he’d been ill. Allison, covering her mouth and nose with her sleeve, frog marched Vanya away at record speed.

“Shit, Klaus,” Diego said, appalled. Klaus gurgled something that sounded a bit like an apology. Diego took in his pathetic form, draped over the side of armchair like a sad blanket, and sighed. He’d really liked these shoes, too. “No, dude. It’s okay.”

“I’ll go...get Mom.” Luther was already out the door before Diego could say anything back. Diego huffed. Fine. He didn’t need Luther, or Allison, or anybody. Diego had killed people and gotten through the police academy and killed more people. He could handle a little bit of puke, right?

Well, he had to take into account that Klaus had...caused a fire explosion. What the hell? Maybe he’d thrown something into the fire, somehow? They had a lot of weird shit in Dad’s creepy labs.

Diego considered Klaus like a crime scene. Klaus had gone semi-lucid after throwing up, but had sunk right back into whatever...state he’d been in before. His eyes, glazed with fever, slowly shifted across the room, landing on the ghosts that Diego couldn’t see. His lips moved, slightly, but no sound came out. He was half bent over the world’s most uncomfortable armchair, a wooden armrest digging into his bony rib cage, which just couldn’t be nice at all.

“Klaus.” Diego tried to meet Klaus’s eye. “Would you be more comfortable on the couch?”

“Fam—family meet...” Klaus mumbled.

“Yeah, we were in a family meeting, but we had to stop due to you being a pyromaniac and all.”

“...meet...”

“It wasn’t going well anyway. You probably did us a favor.”

“Okay...” Klaus muttered hazily, sliding further down towards the floor. Drool dripped from the corners of his mouth, smearing on Hargreeves’ precious upholstery. Klaus was about to lose his self-awarded, though much contested, “hottest sibling” award. 

Diego sighed, accepting his position as the Adult of the family. “Alright, bedtime.” He wrapped his arms around Klaus and lifted him like a bride on her wedding day. Klaus was taller than Diego and had bulked up a bit since becoming sober, but he was still pretty easy to lift. “If you puke on me again, I’ll kill you,” he informed Klaus.

Klaus drooled a bit into Diego’s shirt, eyes off in the middle distance. “Impossi...bleh,” he slurred, after a moment.

Diego settled Klaus onto the couch. It was uncomfortable, not a real place to sleep, but he wasn’t going to carry Klaus all the way up the stairs and to his room. He turned Klaus into the recoveryposition, positioning some pillows to keep him there, and covered him with an old blanket that probably cost an absurd amount of money.

“Ben,” Diego said to thin air. He repressed a shiver as he did so. Ben wasn’t creepy, not really, but imagining the ranks of the dead sitting and staring at him was pretty weird. “Watch over him, alright?”

He stood in awkward silence. He imagined Ben’s remark—“ _and what exactly do you want me to do if something happens?_ ”

“Thanks,” Diego said, and went to find Mom and change his shoes. Not necessarily in that order.

* * *

Diego found his siblings having a second, more exclusivefamily meeting in the main hall. Luther, Allison, and Five were standing over Vanya, who was sitting on the stairs, and fussing in their own way.

“Are you sure?” Allison was saying, fretfully pressing her hand to Vanya’s forehead.

“It’s okay if you are, we can handle it,” Luther said. Five tossed him a sharp look.

“Well, I’m sure she’ll have the power to overcome infection now that she has your approval,” Five snapped.

“I swear, it wasn’t me,” Vanya said.

“It’s okay if it was.”

“Stop giving her your approval. If the last few months have proven anything, it’s that nobody needs your approval.”

“Five,” Allison sighed. “He’s just trying to help.”

Diego cleared his throat. All four of his siblings turned to look at him, eyebrows collectively raised. What’s so important? said their expressions.

“Klaus is sick,” Diego said, feeling pretty stupid for announcing such obvious information.

“Yeah, Di, we know,” Allison said, making Diego feel even more stupid.

“Did you guys get Mom?”

“We have to make sure Vanya is okay first. We don’t want that thing with the fire to happen again.” Luther looked down at Vanya as though she was a bomb getting ready to explode. Which, a few months ago, would be a valid characterization, but not now.

“It wasn’t her,” Diego said.

“It wasn’t me!” Vanya said at about the same time, frustration evident. The chandelier starting trembling a bit.

“Have you ever been sick while off your medication?” Five asked.

“No...”

“Then how would you know whether it was you or not?” Five said. His words were kind of harsh, but tone soft. It was always soft, when it came to Vanya. Diego was almost jealous of how easily that affection came to him, the brother who had been a saint incarnate in Vanya’s book.

“Guys,” Diego said, trying to draw attention to the issue at hand. “Klaus is sick.”

“He’s a big boy,” Five said. “He’s been sick before.”

Luther scoffed. “Yeah, and for lots of different reasons.”

Reining in his temper, Diego said, “Sure, he’s been sick before, but never without the drugs.”

Everyone in the room paused, taking in that information. It was true—Klaus had been sick several times in their presence, with cold and flu and whatever else. He’d sneezed and coughed and whined and requested more cough syrup from Mom than necessary. But he’d always been on the drugs. All at once, they had to consider the possibility that Klaus had no idea how to control fluctuations in his powers while sober.

“The fire...you think that could have been a ghost?” Luther said, finally.

“Maybe,” Diego said.

None of them really understood Klaus’s powers. They never had. They’d had to feel out and train Vanya’s powers throughout the entirety of the fuck-it-all time nightmare, and they understood the bounds of them. Vanya’s powers were ridiculously powerful, but once they all had the gist of it, they were easy enough to understand. Sound, energy, fine. Klaus’s powers, though...they were always outside the bounds of normal human perception. All of them had to take for granted what Klaus told them was there, what Klaus told them about death and its aftereffects. In a way, Diego hadn’t wanted to understand it. Klaus’s powers were uncomfortable, forcing him to acknowledge that death may not be peaceful, may in fact be horrifying instead. That maybe he and everybody he loved could eventually turn into a screaming wraith, turning to Klaus as the only source of warmth. And now, their lack of understanding of Klaus’s powers meant that they didn’t know how to control him when he couldn’t control himself.

Pogo appeared at the top of the stairs, brow furrowing in concern. “Children?” he asked, limping towards them. “Is something wrong?”

All of them spoke at once. Varying shades of “Klaus is sick,” “fire in the living room,” “ghosts might control fire,” and “Vanya could be sick.” Pogo took it all in, eyes wide, and accepted what must have sounded the most urgent to him.

“Master Klaus is ill?”

“Right,” Luther answered. “All over Diego’s shoes.”

“And he no longer on his...medications?”

“Two months,” Vanya said.

Pogo nodded firmly. “In the living room, you said?”

They all nodded.

“Master Luther, please fetch Grace and inform her that we will need Number Four’s first aid kit. Miss Allison, please take Miss Vanya up to her room.”

The others scrambled to carry out their instructions, leaving Diego and Five without direction. Five muttered something about research and jumped away. Diego followed Pogo to the living room at a safe distance, not liking the grim look that had passed over his face. It reminded him of the face Pogo made as he explained the necessity of hiding Vanya’s powers from all of them, including her. They’d accepted him back into their lives, but Diego wasn’t quite willing to forgive the lengths that Pogo had taken to be loyal to their father.

They arrived in the living room. Pogo’s eyes tracked the damage that the fire had left. He stepped up to Klaus, taking in his pale, waxy skin and vacant expression.

“Master Klaus?” Pogo asked, his voice soft. The gentle tone almost made Diego smile—all of them had a soft spot for Klaus, the walking human disaster.

Klaus didn’t respond to Pogo verbally, instead closing his eyes. Pogo frowned, making a motion as if to touch Klaus. He paused, as if thinking better of it, and slowly retracted his hand.

“How long has he been like this?” Pogo asked Diego in a low voice.

Diego thought back. He’d been out doing his “idiotic Batman justice” (Patch’s words) most of last night, and only came to the house for the family meeting this afternoon. When he’d gotten to the meeting, Klaus was already languishing in the armchair. “I don’t know. At least this morning,” he said, thinking that it was a safe bet.

“The fire...he caused this?” Pogo gestured to the burn damage, more obvious now that the afternoon sun was shining in through the windows.

“Yeah. I think so. Did you know that he could do that?”

Pogo opened his mouth to answer, but was interrupted by Luther and Mom bringing in the first aid kit. It was smooth black leather, classic Hargreeves, with a large number “4” emblazoned in red on the front. Each of them had their own first aid kits, ever since they were kids, though Diego didn’t quite know the difference between them.

“Hello, dear,” Mom greeted Diego. When she looked at Klaus, her motherly expression faded away. She became calmer and cooler, as she always had when switching to “doctor mode.” It was confusing for Diego as a child, but less so as an adult. It was just like Hargreeves to think that a professional doctor didn’t require any compassion.

“The propofol, I think, Grace,” Pogo said.

“Right.” Mom snapped open the briefcase, revealing a wide swath of medical supplies and several little bottles of medication. Diego watched as she selected a bottle and started to meter out a dose into a syringe. Diego’s daze was broken when she started to wipe down Klaus’s arm with antiseptic.

“W-wh-what are you d-doing?”

“We’re giving your brother some drugs to help him sleep,” Mom said, flicking the syringe to force the air bubbles to the top.

Surprisingly, it was Luther who spoke next. “You can’t do that,” he protested. “Klaus is sober.”

“Don’t be silly,” Mom said, leaning over Klaus with the syringe.

Diego moved without thinking, getting in between Klaus and the syringe. His hand rested on Klaus’s cold, clammy forearm. Pogo gasped, but nothing happened. Klaus only exhaled slowly, turning his head more toward the pillow.

“Master Diego,” Pogo said, no doubt about to say something infuriatingly logical.

“No, Pogo, no. Y-you can’t, okay?”

Pogo looked at him, eyes conflicted. Then at the damage the fire caused, at Klaus, then back to Diego. “You do not understand. Master Klaus is...extraordinarily dangerous, while ill.”

* * *

_Sir Hargreeves had never thought particularly highly of Number Four. Four was not ordinary, not in the ways that Number Seven was forced to be, but his abilities had no practical component. He could speak to the dead, but he could not force them to comply to his will. They could not possess him and he could not bring them into the physical world. For that reason, none of them—not Sir Hargreeves, not Grace, not Pogo himself—were concerned about Number Four getting sick. Most of their focus was on quarantining and medicating Number Seven._

_That was a mistake._

_Sir Hargreeves saw the others’ sickness as an opportunity to increase Number Four’s individual training. Number Four spent two days in the freezing mausoleum, practically despondent when Pogo retrieved him. Number Four was next run through several sets of drills, testing his physical abilities and fighting skills. Sir Hargreeves and Pogo observed him, with Sir Hargreeves freely and ruthlessly offering criticism. Number Four excused himself from the nearly empty dinner table early that night, the malevolence of his ability clinging to him as he passed Pogo in the hallway. Pogo barely managed to repress a shiver._

_Pogo loathed the idea of waking him up for further training. But Sir Hargreeves commanded him, and he owed Sir Hargreeves everything. When Pogo opened the door to Number Four’s room, he was greeted with near-freezing temperatures. His breath rose as steam in the air as he stepped into the room._

_“Number Four?” he called out, trying to keep his voice steady. “It is time for training.”_

_Number Four was tucked under his blankets, but the angry hunch of his shoulders let Pogo know that he was awake._

_“Number Four, you cannot slack on training.”_

_“Get out,” Number Four snarled. His voice was low and the words were clearly scraped out past a sore throat. Pogo’s heart dropped. Had he been foolish in assuming that Number Four’s abilities wouldn’t present a problem, even when he was sick?_

_“Are you—not feeling well, Number Four?” asked Pogo._

_All at once, Pogo was surrounded by corpses. Or so they looked. They were horrifying creatures, eyes black and empty, bodies covered with terrible injuries, glowing with a strange blue light. Pogo was too experienced with the odd and unusual to scream, but he staggered back from the corpses, eyes bulging._

_Number Four spoke again and the corpses spoke with him._ “Get...out,” _they said as one_.

_Pogo, awake of the thin ice he was treading, followed Number Four’s request. Unfortunately, he made another mistake. He reported the happening to Sir Hargreeves._

_Excited with Number Four’s progress, Sir Hargreeves gathered up his notebook and went to address Number Four himself. Pogo followed behind, skin prickling with trepidation. The quiet of the house seemed more oppressive after what he just witnessed. Malevolent. Angry. It seemed unwise to wake the new thing that had chosen to occupy Number Four’s body. But, as it turned out, there was no need to wake up Number Four. When they rounded the corner in the hallway_ , _he was standing at the end of it. His small frame, young and colt-like, seemed to fill up the entire space, from floor to ceiling. He cast a long, twisted shadow._

_Now that Number Four was up, Pogo could see the signs of sickness. The pale skin, sweaty hair, and fevered eyes were telltale._

_“You don’t learn, do you?” Number Four asked._

_“Four, you will stop this childishness at once!” Sir Hargreeves crossed his arms, monocle glinting in glow of the blue light that Number Four was emitting. “You have unlocked new abilities, and instead of developing them, you wish to bite the hand that feeds?”_

_“I’ll do more than bite,” Number Four promised. Around and behind him, corpses started to materialize. Their eyes were angry and bottomless. Pogo, not for the first time around Number Four, wanted to run._

_“You will—”_

_“I won’t do anything.” Number Four’s voice, both immature and damaged from sickness, broke in the middle. But his voice wasn’t the only message. Everything that wasn’t nailed to the floor—including Number Four—began to float up. He advanced forward, unfettered by the fact that his feet weren’t touching the ground. “I won’t do anything for you.”_

_Pogo thought,_ oh. _Maybe Number Seven won’t be the one to kill me._

_“Did you ever love me? Any of us? Or are we just your toys? Are we just your robots to turn off and put away when we’re not working right?” Number Four’s voice was echoed by the voices of the dead, which filled the house, now. Hundreds of voices, if not thousands. He was advancing, crossing the flimsy barrier of distance. Papers and picture frames and broken glass, flew around him._

_“Number Four! You will stop this at once!”_

_A shard of glass flew by Sir Hargreeves, cutting his cheek straight open. Blood splattered the wall and the carpet, color dulled to gray in Number Four’s blue light. “Shut up! Shut up!” Number Four screamed. “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you all, and you’ll deserve it!”_

_Thank God for Grace._

_Grace appeared out of nowhere. Using her robotic strength and the advantage of surprise, she gave Number Four a firm and definite push. He fell out of the air, and down the stairs. The corpses disappeared, the things he’d been floating fell to the ground, and his jaw bone broke with an unsettling crack._

_Grace followed him down the stairs. Like she hadn’t pushed him at all, she cuddled him close and cooed. “It’s okay, honey, you just broke your jaw,” she murmured, as he spit up blood. There was more to it—a fever, a concussion, a psychotic break of a kind—but the jaw was all they told Number Four’s siblings about._

_They wired Number Four’s jaw shut, put him a hastily equipped safe room, and kept him sedated for three weeks. He woke up from it, occasionally, body ripping through the sedatives at double time. He tried to destroy everything—and everyone—in his path while he was awake, leading them to dose him at higher and higher levels. Perhaps a side effect of the enormous amount of sedatives, when he began to recover from his illness, he showed no signs of remembering what had happened during it._

_Number Four was released after he and the other children had recovered from their sickness. Sir Hargreeves never said much of anything about Number Four’s new and extraordinary abilities, nor Number Four’s temporary insanity during his sickness. But he always left the liquor cabinet unlocked, and when Number Four fell into drugs and ran away at age 17, none of them had a word of protest._

* * *

“So he’s dangerous. So what?” Diego said. He gave Klaus, his goofy but well-meaning brother, a side glance. He couldn’t have almost killed Hargreeves and Pogo, right? He saw ghosts, right, and nothing else? But Pogo wouldn’t lie, not about this. “We can’t ruin being clean for him, not now. We owe him better.”

Pogo stared at him. “And what do you suggest?”

“He’s dangerous, Diego,” Luther said, in the same voice that he once proclaimed Vanya to be dangerous. If anything, that only strengthened Diego’s resolve. 

Klaus, again with the great timing, chose that time to wake up. He glanced at Diego’s hand, which was still resting on Klaus’s forearm. His expression was tired and drawn, but he seemed fully awake. “Diego,” he said.

“Y-yeah, Klaus?” Diego said, eyes darting around surreptitiously. He didn’t see any dead people anywhere, or floating objects.

“I’m not—withdrawal. I’m sick.”

“I know. You’re fine. Go back to sleep.”

Klaus continued to stare up at Diego. His clear green eyes started to take on a dangerous blue tint. “I’ve never done this before.”

“Done what?”

“You’re afraid. Of what I could do.” 

Diego had forgotten how perceptive Klaus could be, even when delirious. “I-I know you’d never hurt us.”

Klaus stared straight ahead, as if he hadn’t heard Diego. “I think I’m afraid too,” he said, and passed out.

As soon as Klaus passed out, Diego remembered that the rest of the room existed. He turned around to look at them again. But they weren’t looking at Diego, or even Klaus. They were all looking at Ben, who stood in the middle of the room, and seemed surprised to have their attention.

Ben gathered himself more quickly than the rest of them. “You don’t have to give him drugs,” he asserted. “He can get through this, he won’t hurt anyone. He just needs you to help him through it.”

“How do you know?” Luther said, shoulders squared.

Ben was starting to fade. Quickly, he said, “Because you got me through the first time.” Then, he was gone.

“Well, I guess we’re doing this.” Luther sighed.

Pogo didn’t look happy at all. “I suppose we are.”

* * *

The decision warranted—you guessed it—another fucking family meeting. Diego was sick of the family meetings. He’d be happy if he never had another family meeting again in his life. He’d be okay with family breakfast, but that was because of Mom’s cooking and Griddy’s donuts, not his obstinate siblings.

“You’re saying that Klaus is...what, telekinetic?” Allison said. To her, it seemed like this was all one big joke, and maybe it sounded like one. But she, like the rest of them, should be used to rewriting her reality to cope with the information that Dad had hidden from them.

“He’s never demonstrated this ability before.” Five’s voice was rather flat. He was fixing the mannequin’s eyeliner, which had gotten smeared during all the chaos in the living room.

Diego had a headache. “He just did. In the living room. With the fire.”

“He’s had this power this whole time, and not bothered to tell us about it?” Allison said, still skeptical.

“I don’t think he knew,” Diego said, hesitantly. He turned to Pogo, who nodded in agreement.

“Master Klaus’s more...offensive abilities manifest in times of profound physical and mental stress. Since he has been completely sober, there has been little occasion for him to manifest these abilities.”

“He’s like me? He can move things with his mind?” Vanya asked.

“Yes, Miss Vanya.”

“And he’s...stronger? When he’s sick?” Vanya crossed her arms, her expression troubled. Probably somewhere between sympathizing with Klaus and fearing the possible consequences of getting sick herself. 

“You can control yourself, Vanya. It’ll be okay if you get sick,” Allison said, sounding like she was continuing a conversation.

“But you don’t know. You should give me the drugs.”

Diego shook his head. “Nobody’s taking any d-drugs. Klaus will get through it and learn to control his powers better. If you get sick, you’ll control it too.”

Five looked up from his mannequin, his expression a cross between a petulant teenager and an impatient old man. “And we’re supposed to what, babysit him? Because he’s incapable of taking drugs without jumping off the deep end?”

Diego laid down his trump card. “Ben said we should.”

The room went quiet.

“We need a plan,” Five said.

* * *

Diego was a little annoyed to be given the first watch, since he’d done all that hard work of getting thrown up on and carrying Klaus to the couch that one time. But everyone insisted that he was the new Klaus whisperer because he’d touched him once without being brutally murdered, so they shoved him into the room first. 

Klaus was confined to the “safe room”—yet another secret vault that Hargreeves had built, this one to help confine Klaus’s powers. Vanya had gotten upset over this detail, but acknowledged that Klaus was barely coherent enough to notice anything happening around him, let alone the specific room he was in. Mom had added medical equipment to the room and cozyed it up with colorful blankets, pillows, and a comfortable lounge chair. She’d even brought down Klaus’s fairy lights and strung them along the walls, giving the room a warmer light. It had looked pretty good before they put Klaus in it.

Five, wearing a ridiculous Hazmat suit (“You do not want to know the effect that vomiting has on my capabilities, Diego”), had jumped Klaus from the living room into the safe room. The sudden change in dimension and scenery woke up Klaus from fevered sleep and triggered a minor freak out. All of the objects from the room got thrown around and away, ending up in in haphazard heaps against the walls.

“I am not doing that again,” Five had announced as he removed the shredded Hazmat suit. “He is getting out of there by himself or in a body bag.”

Mom was unbothered by her work being ruined. She hung the IV bag back up on the pole, put the fairy lights back up, and put the blankets on the bed, humming all the while. Diego watched her as she fluffed Klaus’s pillows and tucked him in, kissing him on the forehead. This was the same person who had thrown Klaus down the stairs and broken his jaw. Her ruthlessness combined with kindness was mind-bending sometimes, but at least there was some kindness in there.

Klaus blinked his eyes open when Mom kissed him. “Mom,” he said.

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“I’m sorry about...the room.” The words sounded painful. His throat was clearly wrecked. “It looked nice, I think. Before I, I destroyed it, I guess. How did I...” His eyes unfocused, looking to something behind Mom’s shoulder.

“It’s okay, darling. I know you aren’t feeling well.”

“Been sick before. Not like this,” Klaus said. 

Mom hummed sympathetically, smoothing his damp curls up onto his forehead. She poised herself near the exit, primed to administer a dosage of general anesthesia as a last resort. And only a last resort. She had to put herself in semi-sleep mode to conserve energy, leaving Diego effectively alone, but that was alright. 

Klaus turned to address the corner of the room. “Can you make them quieter?” A beat while someone, probably Ben, responded. “I know.”

Diego plopped himself down in the armchair, propping his feet up on the bed. Klaus’s eyes flew to him. “I’m babysitting,” Diego said.

“Joy.” Klaus looked down at his hands, examining his nails. “It’s chipped.” At Diego’s quizzical look, Klaus clarified, “The polish. It’s chipped.”

“That’s the least of your problems, dude.”

Klaus dropped his hands and stared up at the ceiling. It was a bright, almost fluorescent white. Hargreeves was not the best at home decorating, to be sure. 

“I didn’t know,” Klaus said. “I thought manifesting Ben was the most of it.”

“Don’t worry. Your powers are still the most pathetic. No need to redo the banner.”

Klaus grinned at him. “Honey, you’ve got a big storm coming,” he drawled, snapping his fingers.

Right he was.

* * *

The thing is, they knew that Klaus had issues. They all had issues, they all knew they all had issues. They all had different methods of coping with it. Diego crushed it down into a tiny ball and let it out when he thought his anger would be useful. Allison took comfort in her rumors and her fame, until, of course, she couldn’t. Luther pretended it didn’t exist. Vanya vented it onto a page, covering it with a thin veneer of professionalism and self-reflection. Five, maybe the most traumatized of all of them, obsessed over the Commission and the Apocalypse, and didn’t stop for a second to think.

Klaus, though, Klaus was open about his trauma to an extreme degree. His hat trick was framing it in a way that made it so easy to dismiss. He acted clownish, prancing out his deepest and darkest hurts in a way that made all of them smile, even if unwillingly. Sometimes he wanted to be taken seriously and sometimes he wanted to be ignored, and in the moment, it was hard to tell which was which.

That was part of what made the watch so hard.

_Luther took up baking on Allison’s insistence that he find a non-Moon-related hobby. His newest creation was a tray of amazing-smelling cinnamon rolls, coated in thick, sticky cream cheese frosting. They all jumped on them with reckless abandon. Even Five, whose nose was upturned more often than not._

_In the middle of one of his cinnamon rolls, Klaus paused and said, “Dave would have liked these.”_

_Diego groaned. “Klaus, I don’t want to hear about your dealer’s preferences in baked goods.” A chorus of agreement came the rest of them._

_Klaus smiled, but in retrospect it was plastered on. Faked. “Essential information when angling for discounts, Di.”_

_Klaus’s hand drifted to his collarbone, grasping as though he expected something to be there. Maybe he did have a necklace, once...they lost most everything they’d been wearing, when they went back in time._

Klaus, curled into a ball under his blankets, sobbed like his heart was breaking. “Dave,” he said, like a plea, like a prayer. “Dave, baby, don’t go. Don’t leave me.”

“K-Kl-Klaus...” Diego’s voice was quiet. He could barely force it out. It would be best to wake Klaus up, but experience these last few hours told him that he might just get thrown into the wall.

“Take me with you,” Klaus begged.

“ _The real hero...was Ben,” Klaus announced, smiling. They all rolled their eyes, having heard it a thousand times before. Diego knew that Ben, of all people, wouldn’t have stuck around here. He would have gone to the light at the end of the tunnel, wherever that may_ _be. The fact that Klaus kept trotting him out for attention, even in times of crisis, was nothing short of pathetic._

_“Is there any way to silence that voice in your head that screams out to be the center of attention?” Luther asked, voicing all of their thoughts._

Diego jerked awake as Ben appeared. He was blue and slightly translucent.

“Ben,” Diego said, voice clogged with sleep.

Ben ignored him, walking over to sit by Klaus on the bed. Klaus was quiet, and had been for a few hours. Based on Ben’s behavior, though, Klaus was awake.

“You’re doing good,” Ben said in low tones. He reached a hand out to touch the blankets. He was hesitant, as though not sure he would be able to make contact, but he managed. “You’re fine. You’re almost through this.”

Ben’s tone was practiced and patient. Diego wondered how many times Ben had been there beside Klaus, guiding him, supporting him, listening to him when nobody else in their family would. He tried not to remember all the times Klaus said that Ben was there, and Diego simply hadn’t listened. 

“I’m sorry,” Klaus said, barely hanging on to lucidity.

“Don’t be sorry,” Ben said, eyes downcast.

“I was—and you could have—”

“Klaus, just relax,” Ben said. His voice faded as his body did. Ben again took his place as another one of Klaus’s invisible ghosts.

“You could have touched—you could have, had a life, family...” Klaus said to thin air, voice pained. Diego waited, wondering if Klaus was safe to approach in this state. In that moment of brief consideration, the opportunity was lost. Klaus’s consciousness had lapsed.

 _A handful of times during their estrangement, Klaus had stopped by the gym and called a truce. Of course, he never quite called it that. He usually acted like he was doing some sort of favor to Diego, crowing about redecorating the place and fixing Diego’s appalling sense of fashion. Those times, though, Diego was happy to wave a white flag. Klaus only stopped_ _by if he was starving or it was freezing cold outside. Diego would throw away thousand arguments to make sure that his brother lived another day, even if it was in a way that Diego did not approve of._

_That did not, however, leave Klaus free of criticism._

_Diego asked Klaus, many times, why he couldn’t just get clean. Why he couldn’t just let rehab stick for once, just once, and try to function again. Diego showed Klaus job listings and threw away pills and begged him, again and again, to just try._

_“It’s just so loud, Diego,” Klaus had replied, just as many times._

_From context, Diego knew he meant the ghosts. He didn’t have enough context, then, to understand fully what he meant. Diego, and the rest of his siblings (save Ben), believed that Klaus summoned the dead at will and sent them away when they were unneeded. “Loud” sounded like another excuse for addiction._

_“It can’t be that bad,” Diego told Klaus, once._

_“If you got clean, you could control them,” he told Klaus, another time._

_To be cruel, he said once, “You and the ghosts deserve each other.”_

* * *

The manifesting was too random to be anything but accidental. One moment, Diego would be sitting in the recliner, reading a harlequin novel that he would testify upon penalty of perjury belonged to Allison. The next, he would be surrounded by freezing ghosts. Some of them wore familiar faces. People that he’d killed during missions as a child. People he’d killed during vigilante missions. Maybe the worst, the people that he’d failed to save. All of them wailing their fury and their sadness. 

Yes, they were loud.

Yes, it was almost unbearable.

If this was Klaus’s reality all the time, he could almost understand why Klaus did drugs.

Diego couldn’t help but think back to the times when he’d dismissed what Klaus had been telling him. He’d believed Klaus, in a way, but he’d always thought of Klaus as being a bit...over dramatic, about his abilities. Maybe things would be different if, instead of dismissing him, Diego had supported him. Maybe Diego wouldn’t have woken up to an empty apartment and empty wallet, so many times.

Sure, Klaus had his own blame in the situation. But Diego’s therapist (recommended highly by Patch, who Diego couldn’t help but listen to about everything now) had pointed out to him that he could not change other’s behavior or make them come to terms with their shortcomings. And his personal growth should not be limited by what other people chose to accept about themselves.

Diego wanted some personal growth. That would be good. Maybe it would take away the sting of seeing the truth of Klaus’s reality.

Klaus was curled up on the bed, sniffling pathetically. He’d ripped out Mom’s latest IV, seemingly out of blind reflex, and gotten blood on the sheets. Diego approached him cautiously. Like he was a wild animal. Just a few hours ago, that would seem like a ridiculous term to apply to his gentle-to-a-fault brother. But now it seemed appropriate. Considering that Klaus could, you know, throw him through the ceiling and break his neck with only a half thought.

“Hey, bu-bu-buddy...”

Klaus twitched. Ben, who was sitting beside Klaus with frustration in his expression, looked up.

“It’s Diego. I know it’s kind of l-loud in here...” A true understatement. “But I’m here. You’re okay.”

“Loud,” Klaus repeated.

“Yeah, loud.”

“They don’t stop, ever.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Klaus sighed. Something like resignation.

“Is it okay if I touch you?” Diego asked.

Klaus turned his head partly toward Diego, eyes still closed. If Diego looked at it sideways, it was almost a nod. Diego threw caution to the wind and climbed onto the bed. Ben raised his eyebrows at Diego—a clear _what the fuck are you doing?_ look if Diego had ever seen one—but watched the proceedings rather than say anything. Klaus was shivering, body radiating incredible heat.

Diego hadn’t been smacked away or dismembered quite yet. 

Gently, cautiously, Diego pulled Klaus into a half embrace, and clasped his hands over Klaus’s ears. Uncaring of the danger, the disease. Only seeking to lend Klaus a few minutes of quiet.

There was no immediate and magical effect. But Diego could have sworn that Klaus’s shivers tapered, a little. That his bony body relaxed, minutely.

How many times had Diego told him to get clean, without understanding what that meant? All of those times, he could have said, “I know it’s hard. I’m here. I’ll help you.”

Maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference.

Maybe it would have.

That was the position Luther found them in, when he came to relieve Diego from his shift. No screaming ghosts, no freezing cold, just two dudes in bed, cuddling. Diego might have been embarrassed, but he’d long since learned that embarrassment was a waste of time in this family. 

“Good luck,” Diego told Luther. “He still has a fever. You’ve got a big storm coming.”

“Hell yeah, honey,” Klaus said. “Where’s the puke bucket?”

* * *

Diego and Allison didn’t talk much. He loved her, sure, as any brother would love a sibling. But left with her alone in a room, without gossip about their siblings to smooth the way, there just wasn’t much for them to talk about. They lived lives so far apart from each other. Allison had taken her power and used it to create fame and wealth. Diego had taken his and used it to become a vigilante. He’d resented her for that. It took him a lot of self-reflection, and a lot of talks with his therapist, to understand that they both were using their powers to run away from real adult responsibility. He could not hold his sense of moral superiority over everyone if he really wanted to be happy. If he really wanted to love his family like a brother would.

Diego exited the bathroom, freshly showered and sanitized, to find Allison was sitting outside of Vanya’s room. Her gaze was a million miles away, eyes wet. After a moment of hesitation, with his minds-eye therapist waving her stupid cheery pom-poms in the background, he sat down next to her.

“Luther’s turn to watch,” he offered, when it was clear that she wasn’t going to speak.

Allison lifted her chin and sniffed. “Is Klaus okay?”

Diego shrugged. “Better.”

“Good.”

They sat in silence for several more minutes. Diego decided that, while he might have failed his siblings (and one in particular) several times, he wasn’t going to fail Allison. “So, you gonna tell me why you’re sitting out here, crying?”

Allison’s voice shook as she spoke. “It’s just...Klaus...he...he doesn’t remember. His other powers.”

“Yeah. Pogo said they’re difficult to reach, or something. So vague, so helpful.”

“I don’t think he’s lying about that.” Allison stared at her feet. “But I just, I’ve been sitting here, I’ve been thinking over and over. Was I the one who made Klaus forget?”

“I think you’d remember that. You remembered Vanya.”

“You don’t understand,” Allison protested, voice choked. “Dad had me do so many, so many rumors. I lost count. They were training, practice, help with the media, control—control Vanya, all of these things. Did I just forget this one?”

So Allison was sitting here, tearing herself up about Vanya, and adding Klaus to the mix as well. It didn’t seem quite fair to her, for her to take the punishment for something that wasn’t her fault and something that she probably didn’t even do. More open with the physical affection after outright cuddling with Klaus for hours, he reached out and wrapped an arm around her.

“I don’t think you did. And even if you did...Klaus would know it’s not your fault. Vanya told you it’s not your fault.”

“She says that, but—”

“She’s not just saying it. She means it.”

Allison shook her head, putting her face in her hands. “All those things, I did so many things for him.” Her voice was choked with tears. “He was so horrible, awful, but I did all those things anyway.”

Diego’s therapist told him that acceptance takes time. Acceptance of responsibility, acceptance of forgiveness. He couldn’t force this one for Allison. He couldn’t fix it, fix all of their problems and put them all together by himself.

“It’s okay,” he said.

She cried. 

Being an emotionally mature adult felt an awful lot like being a child, sometimes.

* * *

Diego and Luther switched off a few hours later. Luther reported that Klaus had fallen asleep listening to boring moon stories, and Luther had been able to keep him in the bed with little incident. Despite him being loaded up on Tylenol and having several hours of uninterrupted rest, Klaus’s fever had not broken. He also had managed to rid himself of the IV another couple of times. Diego would tie the dude down, if he thought that it would have any effect. But, telekinesis.

Diego snatched a thermometer, cold compress, and some water bottles, muttering to himself. Did he have to do all the work in this house? As he was stalking his way down to the safe room, he was intercepted by Vanya.

“Why was Allison crying?” she asked.

Apparently, he did have to do all the work in this house. Emotional labor included. “She feels guilty that she rumored you when we were kids.”

Vanya blinked. “Oh. That wasn’t her fault.”

“Why don’t you go tell her that?” Diego gestured Vanya out of his way.

Vanya didn’t move, dark eyes on the supplies in Diego’s arms. “Is Klaus...okay?”

“He’s got a fever.”

“So, no.”

“Not looking great.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Don’t get sick,” Diego said, brushing past her to get to the stairs.

Five was standing at the door to the safe room, staring intently inside the room through the porthole.

“What the fuck are you wearing?” Diego asked.

“Space suit,” Five said.

“That is way too big for you.”

“It’s fire-resistant, waterproof, and has its own oxygen supply. I have no chance of acquiring an infection or burns.”

“You’re wearing a tent.”

“Human beings are filthy.”

“Was that Luther’s?” Diego whistled. “Man, is he going to kill you.”

“Shouldn’t you be getting to the real issue?”

“Why can’t you help?”

“My immune system is delicate, asshole.” Five jumped away. Diego fumbled with the doorknob, muttering under his breath about his extremely unhelpful siblings.

Klaus didn’t look great. Diego had seen him worse—withdrawal, overdose, and half-dead from blood loss would be Diego’s best examples—but he was still not great. He was flushed and his chest moved rapidly up and down, like a little rabbit. Diego dumped all of his crap on the bedside table. Klaus didn’t even stir at the noise.

Forget throwing shit around with his mind and summoning ghosts. Klaus was wiped.

Diego snatched up the thermometer and shoved it into Klaus’s ear. He would have asked permission, for fear of having his head telekinetically ripped off, but Klaus was pretty much dead to the world. He checked the reading. 105.3. Great.

“What can’t you just be sick like a normal person?” Diego activated the cold compress and pressed it onto Klaus’s forehead. “Mom?” 

Mom, who had been standing sentry at the doorway, walked over to stand at Diego’s side. “Yes?”

“Klaus has a fever of 105.”

“Oh dear.” She stepped forward, placing a cool hand on the side of Klaus’s neck. Klaus twitched, slightly, but didn’t open his eyes. “Five, honey, could you fetch Pogo for me?”

The soft hum of Five’s jump sounded just outside the door. Nosy bastard.

Mom gently prodded Klaus. “Klaus, dear,” she said. “Time to wake up.”

Behind them came the distinct sound of Pogo limping into the room. “Grace?” Pogo queried.

“He has a high grade fever of 105.3. Pulse is 110, BP 160/96, respiratory rate 22. Skin is hot and flushed, no sweating. I administered 1,500 mg of acetaminophen an hour ago, which he was able to keep down. I haven’t been able to administer fluids PO and he keeps pulling out the IVs.”

“He hates them,” Diego supplied helpfully.

“Right.” Pogo dug through the medical kit and took out yet another IV bag. 

Diego tried to put a little smirk on his face, masking the worry. “Eighth time’s the charm, right?”

“Master Diego, make yourself useful and run some tepid water in the bath. An inch or two, if you will.”

Feeling very much like a maid, Diego stomped into the attached bathroom and ran some water. He wasn’t quite sure what “tepid” was supposed to be, but he settled for slightly cooler than was comfortable. When he trudged back into the room, Mom and Pogo were in the process of peeling Klaus’s sweat-soaked clothes off of his body. Diego didn’t enjoy the semi-nudity, but at least with Klaus, he was used to it. Klaus had a habit of walking through the house in only a speedo and responding to any complaints with “the cops didn’t arrest me when I wore this at the beach.”

Diego was used to it, but he still could complain. “Gross,” he announced to the room at large.

“Diego,” Mom admonished.

“We need to get him into the bathtub,” Pogo said, taking off the rubber gloves he must have worn to put in Klaus’s new IV. “It will help with his fever.”

Grace bent down, ready to scoop Klaus up and carry him to the bath. No doubt she could do it, but Diego thought that Klaus would probably respond better to a warm human than to a cold robot. “I’ll do it,” he said, gruffly and tough and manly. He leaned over and picked his brother up, thanking the Lord for all those weights he lifted at the gym. Klaus was disturbingly hot, a brand of solid heat that Diego could feel through his clothes. Worse, he didn’t respond at all to being manhandled. The fever had apparently taken everything out of him. Pogo silently picked up the IV bag, checking that the tube wasn’t linked, and they moved in a big procession to the bathroom.

Klaus didn’t react to the cold water, but Diego could swear that the angry flush of his skin went down a bit. Mom wet a washcloth and draped it over his face, eyes tender.

The bath and IV fluids must have helped a bit because, in the middle of his impromptu bath, Klaus woke up. And spectacularly lost his shit.

There was very little in the bathroom to break. The things that could break, did. The shower curtain ripped itself off its rings, the IV bag burst, and the mirror cracked. Blue light and unearthly moans filled the air.

Diego rushed forward to hold Klaus down in the water. He knew it was stupid as fuck, but Pogo and Mom were worried for a reason. Klaus could die of this. Or fry his brain.

“Let go!” Klaus yelped. There was a sudden push against Diego, more gentle than he would expect. He stayed in place by quickly taking hold of the grab bar. “Go away! Get out!” Klaus continued, obviously not in the room with them. Out of the corner of his eye, Diego saw Pogo shaking his head and starting to fill up a syringe. Not good.

“K-Klaus, Klaus, Klaus...” Diego grabbed Klaus’s chin with his free hand, turning his head. There was another push, like a horse trying to buck him off. Diego rode it out, needing to reach his brother before it was too late. “Klaus, it’s just me, it’s Diego. You gotta calm down, okay? You’re sick but you’ll be okay, you just have to calm down.” To emphasize his words, he sort of petted Klaus’s hair, hoping it would help a bit.

“Get away from me! Go!” The glass shards from the mirror lifted into the air, flying in all directions. Diego used his powers to curve all of the shards away from the living beings in the room. Klaus was stronger than him, he thought, but directionless. Diego simply gave the energy of his power a target. The shards curved around all of them and buried themselves into the tile walls.

“Master Diego,” Pogo said, and Diego knew what he was going to say. Klaus needed to be drugged.

“Not yet!” Diego snapped. He turned back to Klaus. “Klaus, buddy, I’m trying to help you. Please, just come back, you need to come back.”

Then, a miracle. Like the sun coming out, some of the lucidity bled into Klaus’s eyes. “Ben?”

Close enough. “Yeah, he’s here.”

“I don’t feel so good.” Klaus looked around, eyes foggy. Diego doubted he could actually see anything...but, then again, Diego didn’t know if he needed eyes to see the ghosts.

“My brother, Klaus, with an understatement. I never thought I’d see the day.”

* * *

Klaus’s fever was no longer dangerously high, so they dressed him and put him back to bed. Diego groaned when he looked down at his shirt and noticed that it was soaked through. “Great.”

Mom gave Diego a sweet smile. “You can go change, honey, your brother will be okay for a bit.”

Diego took the offer, trudging out of the safe room and towards the stairs. When he got to the stairs, he saw that Vanya was sitting on the bottom step, biting her lip and holding her violin case.

“Thought you didn’t want to get sick.”

Vanya didn’t make eye contact. “I—when we were kids, he liked my violin. Said it made the ghosts...quieter. I thought I could...” She gestured to the room, her sentence trailing off. 

Vanya had hardly touched her violin since the not-Apocalypse. Some part of Diego was a little cagey at the idea of her playing it, but he knew just as well as anyone in the house did that Vanya did not need a violin to end the world. Diego looked up and saw, at the top of the stairs, Number Five. He was glaring murderously, as though daring Diego to crush Vanya for reaching out.

“I...yeah,” Diego said, after the silence had dragged a bit too long. “I think he’d like that.”

A little smile formed on Vanya’s face. A good expression, after so much bad. It was a relief. “Okay,” she said, standing up, and snapping the case open. As she pulled the violin out, she turned to give him a more appraising look. “You should get changed. You’re soaked.”

Diego almost wanted to disagree. Klaus was vulnerable right now, and Vanya was...Vanya. But that was just it. Vanya was their sister. Trust and love is a two way street, as his therapist said. And maybe it was time for Diego to extend it to her a bit more.

“Okay,” he said, and started up the stairs. He made eye contact with Five, who nodded at Diego almost graciously and jumped away.

* * *

For the first time in a long time, the house was alive with music. Unlike the horrible song that Vanya had played that night in the theater, this one was light and cheerful, and her power light and cheerful along with it. It seemed almost playful, rather than murderously powerful, bouncing around the house in streams of white light.

Diego, newly dry, sat beside Klaus and just listened.

By the end of the concert, Klaus’s fever had broken.

* * *

Diego had a brief but intense argument with Five about who was going to take next shift, ending with Five rhapsodizing about he’d prevented the Apocalypse and none of them would be having this conversation if it weren’t for his time traveling brilliance. Vanya obviously wasn’t available, and Allison cited to her fever-rumoring, as though she hadn’t learned to deal with that over the past sixteen years at all. 

Diego wouldn’t have fought it so hard but for one fact. Klaus was awake, hadn’t thrown up for a while, and had just spent the last several systematically hours pulling out his IV. Whoever had next shift would actually have to convince Klaus to eat something.

If Klaus were high, depending on the high, it wouldn’t be so much of an issue. But feeding Klaus while sober, at the very best of times, was like feeding an extremely picky cat. Luther had actually gotten tears-eyed at the last family dinner, when Klaus rejected the first plate of food for having too many carrots, the second plate for having too few carrots, and the third plate for having “too medium” carrots. Ben, when corporeal, took every opportunity to complain about how Klaus was a wretched monster who would be happy to die of starvation out of spite. Klaus had once tried to pass off a sleeve of sugar cones as dinner and invited open debate for others to prove otherwise. Five, their smaller monster:, had joined Klaus’s side in the debate.

And that was at the best of times. They were now adding on nausea and emotion-triggered telekinesis.

The BRAT diet sounded about right.

Klaus was coherent and sitting up when Diego, the ultimate loser of the shift debate, walked into the room. When Klaus spotted the tray Diego was carrying, he said, “Oh fuck no.”

“Oh fuck yes,” Diego said, uprighting the nightstand and setting the tray down.

“You’re trying to give me... _bone water_?”

“It’s broth, don’t be a bitch.”

“I’m a vegetarian.”

“I saw you eat an entire meat lover’s pizza last week.”

“Last supper.”

“It sure will be if you don’t eat your food.”

Klaus sneezed and sniffled, looking rather pathetic. “My stomach hurts,” he whined. The contents of the tray started to rattle dangerously, the tray wobbling its way towards the edge.

Diego caught it. “If you knock this over, I’m just going to bring it back with even more food.”

“You’ll fold like Luther on poker night.”

“Try me.”

“I seem to recall a tale about...rice and a—” Klaus paused his witty retort to cough into his sleeve. “—a checkerboard, I think...that reveals your plan as quite unsustainable.”

“Oh no.” Diego took out a spoon and dipped it into the broth. “Better eat now, then.”

“Do you have a spoon holder on your utility belt?”

“No.”

“Let me see.”

Diego scooped up some broth and held the spoon in front of Klaus’s mouth. “Here comes the airplane,” he sing-songed.

Klaus glared at the spoon, his impulse to complain with the childish treatment fighting with his impulse to win at the food war. He took a slow, mediocre grab at the spoon, which Diego dodged.

“Nah-ah, clearly babies can’t feed themselves,” Diego scolded.

“Fuck off.” Klaus grabbed the bowl from Diego, who let it go. Klaus slurped soup into his mouth with no small amount of aggression. For a little bit, the only sound in the room was Klaus’s eating and Diego’s slow, not very obligatory breathes. In this house, it almost passed for peaceful. Klaus stopped eating when the bowl was half empty and set it on the tray, going directly for the pudding cup. 

“You need to eat dinner to get dessert.”

“I ate dinner.” Klaus stared at the chocolate pudding, thinking hard. “Did I ever tell you about that time I—“

“Nope!” Diego shot up from the chair. Luther’s delicately phrased description of the chocolate pudding event was more than enough. He shouted to cover up Klaus’s words as he stormed into the bathroom. “Nope! Nope! Nope!”

Diego had forgotten that the mirror in the bathroom was gone. He stared at it, confused, unable to really fix his hair. He was about to turn back into the room, when he heard Klaus’s soft voice.

“Did I hurt anyone?” Klaus asked quietly.

“No,” Ben said, equally quietly. “You got through it.”

“That’s good.” Klaus still sounded a bit troubled. “I didn’t know. Uh, telekinesis, huh? That’s a little...weird.”

“Not a great fit for you,” Ben agreed. “But they’ll help you. You’re not alone now.”

Klaus’s voice was so soft that Diego could barely make it out. “I was never alone.”

When the silence had gone on for a couple of minutes, Diego thought it was safe to return to the room. He strode our and caught a glimpse of Ben, sitting on the bed next to Klaus. Ben gave Diego a shy smile, so familiar that it sent chills down Diego’s spine. “Thank you,” Ben said, and vanished.

Klaus only let the silence sit for a minute. “I’m not thanking you. You’re terrible. That bone water was poison.”

“You’re one ungrateful shit.”

Klaus huffed and—pushed him. Gently, of course. Diego staggered back a couple of steps. Oh, right, that thing. The telekinesis. Klaus must have noticed his expression, because he grimaced.“So, do we have to do...training, now?”

As if on cue, Five jumped into the room, slamming a giant pile of books on the bed. “I have ideas.”

Klaus fell back into his pillows and covered his eyes. “I hate you. I’m not reading anything.”

“You love me and you’re reading everything.”

Diego sighed. Five was, as always, Five. He made eye contact with Klaus over Five’s head, intent on easing Klaus’s tense and drawn expression. “We’ll figure it out. Together.”

Klaus smiled. “Together.” With one sweep of his hand, all of Five’s books flew off the bed and into the wall. Klaus giggled at Five’s resultant complaints and whining. “Sounds good.”


End file.
